ABSTRACT
British debates around difference and disorder have been dominated by two distinct bodies of writing, the first rooted in the mid-nineteenth century and the second in the late-twentieth. Although the post-1945 period opened a new chapter in British race relations with the large scale permanent migration of West Indian and Asian workers and families, questions of ethnic, national and religious differences had been a part of debates about delinquency from at least the mid-nineteenth century. Radical academic research into race relations was carried out in ways that fixed negative connections between difference, disorder and delinquency. Questions of black delinquency became bound up with questions of wider social disorder. Riots were often initially sparked by police investigations of petty crime alleged to have been committed by black youth. The construction of late twentieth century black youth as a social problem rested upon earlier negative constructions of young post-war migrants as well as pre-war and even turn-of-the-century mixed race youth.
